Thousands of eggs dropped on Cougar Stadium

A helicopter dropped 25,000 Easter eggs on Azusa Pacific University’s field on Saturday, April 7. Glendora’s Foothill Community Church sponsored this second annual Egg Drop.

Long entrance lines wrapped around the east edge of Cougar Stadium and colorful balloons that were strung together framed the bridge at the entrance. A sea of brightly-dressed kids equipped with pink, purple, and blue Easter baskets in hand flooded the track floor.

Parents stood by as their children jumped in the bouncer, slid down the oversized slide or put on padded helmets and picked up soft beams to fight with in the inflatable fighting rink.

As 10 a.m. approached, people cleared the field to prepare for the helicopter to arrive and drop the eggs.

On the count of three, the kids ran onto the field and picked up every egg in sight, leaving none behind in less than five minutes.

Foothill Community Church COURTESY

“It was wonderful,” said Maria, who traveled all the way from Victorville, Calif. with her three kids to attend the celebration.

“We got so many,” Maria’s 6-year-old daughter, Vanessa, said, holding up her blue basket filled to the top with eggs.

Foothill Community Church’s director of children’s ministries, Sara Dykema, and her assistant, Kelly Koch, coordinated the event. They covered the costs by saving money since over the past year and utilizing some of the church’s Easter service budget.

Last year was the first time that the Foothill Community Church organized Egg Drop, but it was held at Witcomb High School in Glendora and they only dropped about 4,000 eggs. This year, the event was over eight times that size, and there were too many eggs for them all to be dropped from the helicopter. Between the candy-filled eggs dropped and those already spread on the field, there were over 25,000.

“We do this because we really want to put on a fun event for people from school, from church, believers and non-believers, so they can gather as a community and just have a fun event,” Koch said.

Many attendees seemed to have fun at the event, which made organizers feel that it was a success.

“When I looked up and saw [volunteers] throwing [free] shirts into the audience, and everyone was screaming when they saw the helicopter, it kind of felt like a rock-concert,” Travis Townsen said.

“It was awesome. The Helicopter flew right on top, and when we went to get our eggs it was fun because everyone was running,” Robby Watkins said as he sat on the floor looking through all the eggs he collected in his Spiderman bag. He and his family have attended Foothill Community Church for four years.

Foothill Community Church hoped this event would not only be fun for the community, but that it would also introduce people to the church.

“This is hopefully a bridge for people in the community to cross in order to come to church and know Christ. That is what this is all about,” Koch said.

Likewise, Townsen said he hoped the gathering would encourage more people to attend their church because they can see it is not made up of stereotypical rigid and stiff Christians. Instead, he said he wants other to see they are normal people just like themselves, so they should not feel intimidated; he hoped this event helped get rid of that image.

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